Pandemic Wounds: Understanding & Treating COVID-19 Trauma
Presented by
Dreya Blume, LCSWParticipants will learn how COVID-19 has shaped coping patterns, resilience, and interpersonal dynamics, while considering ethical and culturally sensitive approaches to treatment.
Overview
1.5 CEs Meets Criteria for Law & Ethics, Health Equity, or Cultural Competence CEs Recorded: April, 2026
The COVID-19 pandemic has left a profound mark on mental health, producing grief, loss, chronic stress, and collective trauma that continues to affect clients worldwide.
This training introduces psychotherapists to the unique psychological and relational impacts of pandemic-related trauma, exploring both individual and systemic dimensions.
Participants will learn how COVID-19 has shaped coping patterns, resilience, and interpersonal dynamics, while considering ethical and culturally sensitive approaches to treatment.
Through case examples, discussion, and reflective exercises, attendees will explore practical strategies to help clients process pandemic-related experiences, manage lingering stress and anxiety, and rebuild connection and meaning. Therapists will leave with tools for recognizing pandemic trauma, fostering resilience, and integrating these insights into everyday clinical practice.
Workshop Objectives:
Develop an understanding of the psychological, relational, and systemic impacts of COVID-19 trauma. Learn practical strategies to support clients in processing pandemic-related grief, stress, and anxiety. Identify ways to integrate awareness of pandemic trauma into assessment, treatment planning, and resilience-building interventions.
About the Presenter
Dreya Blume (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator. Dreya began working in the mental health field in 2004 in southwest Virginia, where she spent almost two decades serving the local transgender community as a gender therapist. She recently moved to Durham, NC, where she focuses on offering continuing education training to therapists and coaching for private practice clinicians who want to expand their business uniquely. Dreya loves to write and is the author of several books, including, “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” “Journaling the Tarot,” “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” and “Tarot for Transformation: Using the Major Arcana to Discover Your Best Self and Create a Life Worth Living.” All of Dreya’s books (under her former name, Andy Matzner) are available here: https://dreyablume.com/books. Dreya is also passionate about teaching. Before becoming a mental health clinician, she spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in places such as Japan, Australia, Thailand, and Hawaii. Once in Virginia, Dreya worked as an adjunct professor for almost twenty years at Hollins University, teaching gender studies and sociology in their Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition, she spent twelve years teaching future social workers in the human services program at Virginia Western Community College. Learn more about Dreya on her website: https://dreyablume.com/.